Hangman: A Novel Read Free

wind toss the tops of the hundred-year oaks in the yard next door, Ron and Charles’s place. She’d invite them over for dinner when the tomatoes were ready.
    Her neighbors. It felt good to say that. She turned and reached for the next bag of mulch.
    “Where’s that man of yours anyway?”
    Abbie looked up. A head had appeared over the battered wooden fence that bordered the side of her yard. Ron.
    “He’s shopping for his moose-hunting trip,” she said, smiling and sitting back on her haunches. “He’s Canadian, you know.”
    Ron rolled his eyes. He was the more sociable half of the couple. Ron was a social worker who dealt with some of the toughest families on the East Side. Charles was a professor at the university, teaching in the English Department, and he had the posture and frostiness of an academic. Abbie had his book on medieval poetry on her bookshelf.
    “Nobody’s
that
Canadian. He’s really going to shoot a moose?”
    Abbie laughed. “Next month, if he can find one. If not, he’ll drink with his buddies and dream about me.”
    Ron scoffed. He had reddish hair and a broad, pleasant farm boy’s face. “I hope for your sake that he doesn’t dream about one of those buddies. Do they have beards?”
    Abbie stood up, stretched her back, then walked slowly and laid her arms across the top of the fence. It needed painting. Maybe she couldget it in before winter came. “No recruiting people’s boyfriends. ’Specially mine. How’s Charles?”
    Ron made a face. “Fine, I guess. He’s giving one of his tours.”
    Abbie’s house lay smack in the center of Buffalo’s arts district. Downtown Buffalo was thick with history and she’d found that a surprising number of her neighbors were involved with preserving it. Half of them seemed to be on the landmark commission, and Charles took visitors through the local sites on guided tours: the Albright-Knox Museum, the Frank Lloyd Wright House, the twin spires of the faded but still glorious Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane.
    “Which one is it today?”
    Ron rolled his eyes. “I think it’s the architecture special. Or the tour of the old Erie Canal. You know, the
exciting
one.”
    “Why doesn’t he start a famous murders of Buffalo tour? I could lead that one.”
    “He’s going to be
in
that one if he doesn’t get home soon.”
    Abbie gave him a mock-horrified look. “You need a drink, hon?” she asked.
    “I do. I have a foster mom whose fat neck I’m considering strangling. You’d be saving a life.”
    “Give me ten minutes and I’ll—”
    The phone in her pocket buzzed.
    Ron, hearing it, widened his eyes and wagged his finger back and forth with an alarmed look on his face. “Oh nuh nuh no. We have an oral contract. My need for alcohol is much more pressing than some …”
    Abbie said, “Hush,” brushed her hands off, and reached for the phone. Don’t let it be work, she thought. I could use a drink, too. She felt peaceful, the fall glory of her yard filling her with a strange contentment.
    The message was from the Buffalo PD’s emergency channel.
    MARCUS FLYNN ESCAPED. ALL PERSONNEL REPORT HQ.

3
    The crowd on the second floor of Buffalo Police Headquarters was as big as Abbie had ever seen it, except for last year’s mass-disaster training day where the city had simulated a terrorist attack. Then there’d been sheriffs, firemen, deputies, everything in uniform above the rank of school crossing guard, socializing before they’d gone out to tend to the fake victims with blood painted on their faces and leg wounds provided by the university’s theater department. It had been a carnival of local law enforcement, the mood light. Abbie had eaten a hot dog and enjoyed herself.
    And why not? As one cop had said, “What kind of dipshit is gonna bomb Buffalo?”
    But now there was a dark electricity in the air as Abbie walked through the room. She felt it in her chest. Usually when there was an emergency, you could sense a barely